Local events

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2024

Convened by Chris Timpson

NOTE THE NEW TIME: Seminars will take place in person at 3.00 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (25 April): Simon Saunders (Oxford)
Finite frequentism explains quantum probability (or: Gibbs meets Everett)

Week 2 (2 May): Natasha Oughton (National Quantum Computing Centre)
Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction

Week 3 (9 May): NO SEMINAR

Week 4 (16 May): Jingy Wu (LSE)
Between a Stone and a Hausdorff space

Week 5 (23 May):Daniel Grimmer (Oxford)
In search of new spacetimes: topological redescription via the ISE method

Week 6 (30 May): NO SEMINAR

Week 7 (6 June): Oliver Pooely (Oxford)
Dynamical versus geometrical approaches to spacetime structure

Week 8 (13 June): Giovanni Valente (Milan)
On the quantum Boltzmann equation: what is the source, if any, of irreversibility?

Philosophy of Physics research seminars Hilary Term 2024

Convened by Chris Timpson

NOTE THE NEW TIME: Seminars will take place in person at 3.00 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week1 (18 Jan): NO SEMINAR

Week 2 (25 Jan): Caspar Jacobs (Leiden)
Stating Maths-First Realism, or How to Say Things with Models

Week3 (1 Feb): NO SEMINAR

Week 4 (8 Feb): Adam Caulton (Oxford)
Reduction and Equivalence: Some mild suggestions

Week 5 (15 Feb): NO SEMINAR

Week 6 (22 Feb): Nick Ormrod (Oxford)
Which theories have a measurement problem?

Week 7 (29 Feb): NO SEMINAR

Week 8 (7 Mar): James Read (Oxford)
The non-relativistic geometric trinity of gravity

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars: Michaelmas Term 2023

Convened by Oliver Pooley

NOTE THE NEW TIME: All seminars will take place in person at 3.00 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (12 Oct): David Wallace (Pittsburgh)
Thermodynamics with and without reversibility

Week 2 (19 Oct): Nicholas Teh (Notre Dame)
Understanding the Geroch–Jang argument

Week 3 (26 Oct): Sabine Hossenfelder (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy)
Superdeterminism – the forgotten solution

Week 4 (2 Nov): NO SEMINAR

Week 5 (9 Nov): Tim Palmer (Oxford) and Chris Timpson (Oxford)
‌Superdeterminism and non-conspiracy revisited: a debate

Week 6 (16 Nov): Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial)
Aspects of Leggett–Garg tests of macrorealism

Week 7 (23 Nov): Neil Dewar (Cambridge)
The hole argument and mathematical practice

Week 8 (30 Nov): Bryan Roberts (LSE)
How black holes are really hot

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2023

Convened by Patrick Durr and James Read
All seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (27th April): Sebastian de Haro (Amsterdam)
Dualities and quasi-dualities: on solitons and phases of quantum field theories

Week 2 (4th May): Johannes Fankhauser (Oxford/Innsbruck)
Quantum uncertainty and empirical completeness

Week 3 (11th May): Renate Loll (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
Questions on quantum gravity

:Week 4 (18th May): Paul Skokowski (Stanford)
Superpositions and beliefs about superpositions

Week 5 (25th May): Fedele Lizzi (Naples)
Quantum Observers for Quantum Spacetime

Week 6 (1st Jun): Doreen Fraser (Waterloo)
Philosophical implications of measurement in QFT

Week 7 (8th June): Dennis Lehmkuhl (Bonn)
TBA

Week 8 (15th June): Natasha Oughton (Oxford)

Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Hilary Term 2023

Convened by Oliver Pooley, Henrique Gomes, and Patrick Durr
All seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (19th January): NO SEMINAR

Week 2 (26 January): Kobi Kremnitzer (Mathematical Institute, Oxford)
Scientific theories of consciousness, the closure
of the (current) physical, and quantum collapse

Week 3 (2 Feb): NO SEMINAR

Week 4 (9 February): James Read (Philosophy, Oxford)
‌An invitation to constructive axiomatics

Week 5 (16 February): Marco Giovanelli (Philosophy, Turin)
Special Relativity as a theory of principles. On Einstein’s distinction between constructive and principle theories

Week 6 (23 February): Yemima Ben-Menahem (Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Lawlessness

Week 7 (2 March): Marina Cortês (Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Lisbon)
Biocosmology: towards the birth of a new physics field

Week 8 (9 March): Johannes Fankhauser (Philosophy, Oxford)
‌The empirical completeness problem of quantum mechanics

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2022

Convened by Oliver Pooley and Henrique Gomes
All seminars (apart from the BBLOC seminar in Week 8) will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (13 October): Caspar Jacobs (Oxford, philosophy)
‌The Model Is Not the Territory: On Quality and Isomorphism

Week 2 (20 October):Lu Chen (Koç University)
A discrete case for dynamicism

Week 3 (27 October):Christian Wüthrich (Geneva, Philosophy)
Laws beyond spacetime

Week 4 (3 November):NO SEMINAR

Week 5 (10 November):Ted Jacobson (Maryland and Cambridge, Physics)
Diffeomorphism invariance and the black hole information paradox

Week 6 (17 November):Patrick Dürr (Oxford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Philosophy)
Conventionalism – a sophisticated philosophy for our (space)times

Week 7 (24 November):Natasha Oughton (University of Oxford)
Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction

Week 8 (1 December): BBLOC seminar, Kings College London: Sam Fletcher (Minnesota and London)
The representation and determinable structure of quantum properties

For details of the BBLOC seminar, email Alex Franklin, KCL.

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2022

Convened by Simon Saunders
All seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Trinity Term in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (28th April): Ard Louis (Oxford, physics)
An algorithmic version of Occam’s razor in machine learning and biological evolution

Week 2 (5th May):Julian Barbour (Independent, physics)
Complexity as Time

Week 3 (12th May): Tomasz Bigaj (Warsaw, philosophy)
Entanglement and discernibility of identical particles

Week 4 (19th May): Jim Al Khalili (Surrey, physics)
Life on the Edge: the dawn of quantum biology

Week 5 (26th May): Nick Huggett (Illinois, philosophy)
Quantum gravity in a laboratory

Week 6 (2nd June):Simon Saunders (Oxford, philosophy)
Probability and branch-counting in the decoherence-based Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics

\Week 7 (9th June): Fay Dowker (Imperial, physics)
Recovering General Relativity from a Planck scale discrete theory of quantum gravity

Week 8 (16th June): Oliver Pooley (Oxford, philosophy)
Models of the open future and relativistic physics

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Hilary Term 2022

Convened by Oliver Pooley
Unless otherwise indicated, seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Hilary Term, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (20th January): Tushar Menon (Cambridge)
Dynamical substantivalism

Week 2 (27th January): Claudio Calosi (Geneva)
Wavefunction monism

Week 3 (3rd February): Valeriya Chasova (Salzburg / Strasbourg / Louvain-la-Neuve) (Online only.)
Local symmetries have direct empirical status

Week 4 (10th February): Samuel Fletcher (Minnesota)
Relativistic spacetime: dependence and ontology

‌Week 5 (17th February): James Read (Oxford)
‌Curvature coupling, electromagnetic wave propagation, and the consistency of the geometrical optics limit

Week 6 (25th February): NO SEMINAR

Jowett Society talk (same venue as Thu seminar)
Week 6 (Friday 25 February):
Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnam University)

Week 7 (3rd March): NO SEMINAR

Jowett Society talk (same venue as Thu seminar)
Week 7 (Friday 4 March):Tim Maudlin (NYU)
‌Law, fact, or mathematical consequence? Metaphysical options in mathematical physics

Week 8 (10 March): Katherine Brading (Duke)
Du Châtelet, Euler, d’Alembert: constructive and principle approaches to philosophical mechanics

BBLOC SEMINAR Kings College London
Week 9 (17 March) Neil Dewar (Cambridge)
TBC

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2021

Convened by James Read
The following seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Michaelmas Term, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (14th October): Sebastián Murgueitio-Ramirez (Oxford)
On Symmetries, Models and Representation

Week 2 (21st October): Kasia Rejzner (York)
Symmetries, anomalies and quantum Noether theorem

Week 3 (28th October): No seminar

Week 4 (4th November): David Wallace (Pittsburgh)
The sky is blue, and other reasons physics needs the Everett interpretation

Week 5 (11th November): Milena Ivanova (Cambridge)
What is a beautiful experiment?

Week 6 (18th November): Tomoko Kitagawa (Oxford/Science Museum)
Moscow, Oxford, or Princeton: Emmy Noether’s move from Göttingen

Week 7 (25th November): Emily Qureshi-Hurst (Oxford)
The many worries of many worlds: exploring some possible implications of Everettian quantum mechanics

Week 8 (2nd December): Neil Dewar (Cambridge)
Symmetries, quiddities, and higher-order structure>

Week 9 (9th December) BBLOC seminar: Katie Robertson (Birmingham)
On the status of thermodynamics: village witch’s trial

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars TT 2021

Convened by Adam Caulton
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Trinity Term online by Zoom.

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (29 Apr): Caspar Jacobs (Oxford)
Comparativist theories and conspiracy theories: the no miracles argument against comparativism

Week 2 (6 May): Nora Boyd (Siena College, NY)
Is Laboratory astrophysics astrophysics?

Week 3 (13 May): Alyssa Ney (UC Davis)
Three arguments for wave function realism

Week 4 (20 May): Gordon Belot (Michigan, Ann Arbor)
The Mach—Einstein principle of 1917—1918

Week 5 (27 May): Mike Miller (Toronto)
Cluster decomposition and entanglement

Week 6 (3 June): Jacob Barandes (Harvard)
Why we shouldn’t believe in Hilbert Spaces anymore, and the case for Platonic quantum theory

Week 7 (10 June):David Albert (Columbia)
How to teach quantum mechanics

Week 8 (17 June): Tim Maudlin (NYU)
The PBR theorem, quantum state realism, and statistical independence

Seminars given in HT 2021 are now available on You Tube